Cold Steel
Page 202

“Do you believe killing them will ease the pain or change anything,” I cried, “except to orphan the children who depend on them?”
“You’re so naïve, Cat. That they know the one they cast out has returned to destroy them will make the triumph all the more sweet.” He glanced at the general.
“In due time, James,” said Camjiata, “in due time, we will march to your old home. But not today.”
“I have been patient.”
“So you have,” agreed the general so sincerely that I believed the general believed it.
Drake dusted his fingers together, tugging on the gloves that always concealed his hands, then turned and walked out. The general closed the door.
“This is where I sleep. You can rest here.”
He set me on a bed, and I lay down because I hadn’t the strength to stand.
Rory sat beside me and began rubbing my hands. A sort of blindness and deafness smothered me. I was a wounded animal panting in the shadows, too weak to lick my injuries.
Camjiata’s voice rumbled softly. Rory replied. They conversed in a friendly manner as Rory’s thumbs stroked back and forth along my palms until the tension eased from my hands. I surrendered to the waters of sleep, for it was better to drown than to suffer with the bloody scar that had been reopened.
Hungry wolves fed at my entrails. I ran from the Wild Hunt, but it was gaining, gaining, and my sire caught me in his icy claws. My severed head rolled down stone steps, bumping like a rubber ball used in batey. It tumbled off a cliff and plummeted into the Great Smoke. Leviathan purred.
Purred?
I woke in a dark chamber. Rory was stretched out beside me, snoring in that snuffling way he had. We were both still fully clothed. My sword, basket, and satchel rested at the foot of the bed. At the table Camjiata sat reading through a stack of dispatches by the light of an oil lamp. The light shed gold on his face, but his eyes were pools of darkness.
I sat up.
Without looking up from his reading, he spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb Rory. “There is ale and bread on the side table. A basin, if you want to wash.”
I slid off the bed. Rory did not stir, but something in his changed breathing made me think he had woken, as wild animals do at the least movement, but was pretending to be asleep to give us privacy. At the side table I washed my face in the basin, then sat opposite the general.
“Don’t you sleep?” I asked.
“Cursed little. I concentrate best on dispatches at night, when no one disturbs me. A nap or two during the day suffices. How fare you, Cat?”
“Did you expect me to embrace them?”
“I thought it best to get the meeting out of the way. I can’t say I expected your anger. Beatrice did not confide the full particulars to me.”
“So you found a way to discover the full particulars by surprising me with the meeting.”
He looked up with a wry smile. “Is that what you think of me, Cat?”
I could not fathom how I could like him, yet I did. “You want me to kill Drake. But how can I trust you? You betrayed me.”
He glanced toward the door and nudged my foot under the table to signal me that people waited outside. “I did not betray you. You walked into Taino country of your own free will.”
“That you can say that with a straight face and such sincerity is almost admirable! Everything I did was encouraged and machinated by you.”
He smiled. “I’ve got some sack. It’s an Iberian wine from the Sherez region near Gadir.”
I felt the presence of a trap, a danger I wasn’t aware of. Yet with the fall of night my sword had bloomed, even if to his eyes it still looked like a cane. The locket warmed my skin. My parents walked with me, so I nodded.
He fetched a bottle and two glasses. He poured, sipped from the glass as if to mock me for thinking he might mean to poison me, and handed it to me before pouring for himself. I shifted the glass to swirl the wine, then tasted. The liquor had a dark brown color and a strong, sweet taste that I did not like as much as rum’s.
“I wish you hadn’t given my father’s journals to the family. I’ll never get them back now.”
He pushed aside the pile of dispatches. “If you go to Gadir, you can sue in court for rei vindicatio, the right to regain possession of something you already own. If you can stand up in court and swear that Daniel Hassi Barahal sired you and thus you are his next of kin.”
My mouth had gone so dry that my voice emerged hoarse. “Daniel and Tara were married. That makes him my father.”
“Yes. According to the law, the husband of a woman is the father of her children and thus has legal rights of guardianship over them. Whom was Tara protecting?”